


White Light

by suncityblues



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, also heads up this is kind of angsty at the beginning, everyone is also secretly a drama queen, everyone's an asshole, post-TFA, some novels spoilers but mostly minor stuff about hux's backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suncityblues/pseuds/suncityblues
Summary: Takes place post-TFA (the story was also written before TLJ came out, I just edited and cross-posted it from my tumblr).Kylo Ren is injured and feeling sorry for himself, Hux is almost certainly not interested in dealing with it.“Ben Solo has a home to go back to but Ben Solo is dead. Kylo Ren has nothing but power.”





	White Light

The thing about bacta tanks and bed rest is that during the long hours of doing nothing –by order of the medical staff and much to Hux’s palpable annoyance– Kylo Ren begins to think about his life.

 

He can’t help himself from remembering Han Solo. The red light. A fall, a yell, a thud.  
And then, a happy memory of a street fair on a planet whose name he can’t quite remember, bright lights and endless summer. Being sent away. Terrible bitter loneliness.

Ren always shakes himself out of the memories before they can get too far; suspects that if he just lets himself process it all the way through it wouldn’t creep into his mind so much but still can’t do it. His thoughts take him in circles that are never quite complete, artificially missing a necessary piece. 

It makes him feel angry with himself and like a coward but he doesn’t dwell on that for long either. It gives him a headache.

He thinks about Snoke. He’s not sure why.

+

 

Less often Kylo Ren wonders about his mother.

 

He had felt her pain so sharp and clear when she realized Han had died it was like she was projecting it into Ren from a few feet away. And despite her pain some small part of her is still hoping little Ben would come back, hoping against everything that what she was seeing and feeling and hearing was a trick. Leia’s perfect white hope that refuses to leave her even now.

 

Like a light house, he thinks, or a signal fire. A bright shining beacon in the dark. A white light.

 

If he ever wanted to go home he could just follow the light she left on for him but he never will. How could he now after all that he’s done?

 

Ben Solo has a home to go back to but Ben Solo is dead. Kylo Ren has nothing, only power.

 

He has had to remind himself of that a lot lately, as the scar on his face slowly etches itself back together.

Kylo Ren will die someday too, and maybe he will become something new or maybe he will fade back into carbon and empty space.

 

+

 

Snoke has been not been in contact with Hux or Kylo Ren in several days, most likely because he’s moving to a safer location and refocusing his plans.

Still, the radio silence has been making tensions high on the remnants of the finalizer.

 

Once Ren is physically in the clear and onto bed rest, Hux begins to come by during each day-cycle in a tremendously uncomfortable attempt at filling him in on the ship’s progress. They are, after all, still co-commanders though Kylo has absolutely no interest in the ship, or repairs, or what evasive maneuvers they’re employing to make sure no resistance ships are following them.

He knows no one is following them. He would have felt their anger and grief by now.

 

Hux knows Ren doesn’t care but tells him anyway and in great detail. Ren tunes him out, too bored at the endless quiet to yell at him to leave and too tired to have a tantrum.

Ren suspects it makes Hux feel better to have something to do.

+

General Armitage Hux looks thinner and even more exhausted than before, and seems considerably less cocky now, sticking even closer than usual to regulation so as to not give Snoke any further reason to punish him.

 

Ren knows Snoke is unlikely to be peticularly upset with Hux, after all the objective was successful, and for no reason Kylo Ren understands Snoke actually seems to have faith in Hux.

Even without the force Ren can easily tell Hux thinks Snoke will execute him to make a point. Ren does not try to reassure him.

 

Hux wouldn’t believe him and, besides, he gets a sort of sadistic pleasure in watching Hux worry himself sick; probably the same pleasure Hux gets when he’s lecturing Kylo to death about the status of the ship’s ventilation units.

They tend to even each other out.

 

+

 

“You smell awful,” Hux says one day in the middle of some tirade about antiquated trash compactor systems.

 

Ren ignores him as usual. He doesn’t much want to have a human body with human weaknesses and needs and he certainly doesn’t like having someone else bring it up.

 

Besides, his shoulder is still sore from injury and rabid healing, and considering that he barely has the energy to do much more than eat, sleep, and pee, bathing is fairly low on Ren’s to-do list.

 

Hux sighs and crosses the room, says, “Up.”

 

Kylo Ren glares at him and does nothing, in fact tries his best to make his body even more of a dead weight than usual.

 

Hux has none of it and grabs Ren by the uninjured arm, more or less dragging him to the refresher. He turns it on, shoves a semi-dressed Kylo Ren into the unit and shuts the door after him.

“Stop moping” Hux says.

 

It does wonders to remind Ren just how powerful fury can be but by the time he wakes up enough to force choke Hux, the other man is gone. Instead he takes his anger out by scrubbing himself until his skin is ruddy red and raw.

 

When he returns to his room he sees a maintenance droid has changed his sheets and the vent is running clean air into the room. It really does smell ripe.  
Instead of laying back down and feeling sorry for himself he meditates for the first time since his injury. He manages to push down the memory of snow and Han Solo for the first time in recent memory but the white beacon of the lighthouse is still there in the back of his mind, always.

 

+

 

Hux comes back the next day but Kylo uses the force to keep the door from opening so hard he suspects he might have broken it.

 

+

 

Two days later he dreams about his mother, only she has red-blonde hair and a hideous apron on. When she cries he realizes it can’t be Leia, because Leia never cries.

 

He thinks of red light, then he stops thinking.

 

The planet of Arkanis is collapsing. Rain is coming through a blasted out hole in the roof and the mother who is not General Organa is crying and furious and blubbering rapid fire nonsense like, “Don’t let them leave without me, you can’t let him leave without me, I won’t let them take you if they don’t take me.”

 

But men in white armor are coming and they don’t take her. They pull him away while she’s yelling and he never sees her again.

 

Then there is a face that Kylo has seen many times before, Brendol Hux, but younger and provoked.

 

That’s when he remembers that he’s Kylo Ren and in the dream he’s been standing next to Armitage Hux the whole time.

He’s intruding terribly on someone else’s misery but has no desire to leave.

+

Sometimes when they’re fucking he’ll get glimpses of fights won, violence and anger but never something like this. Hux must truly be worried.

+

 

In the dream, the men tell Brendol that neither his wife nor his child’s mother made it out alive. Ren realizes belatedly the wife and mother are different people.

They say, “Yes, sir, terribly sorry, sir,” one by one when asked questions, though they are not under Brendol’s command and do not need to answer to him.

 

Later, Brendol asks Armitage if what the men told him was true, and Armitage wants so badly to say the right thing and be left alone that all that comes out is, “Yes, sir, terribly sorry sir.”

 

+

 

Kylo Ren suddenly throws himself out of the dream, or vivid memory, he’s not sure what. He reaches out with his mind and touches the beam of the light house to make sure it’s still there.

 

He falls back asleep and peacefully dreams of nothing.

 

+

 

When Ren wakes a second time it’s to a metallic screeching sound and a livid looking Hux. He had expected the second part but the first throws him a bit.

 

“Your door is broken. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Maintenance droids are coming to fix it.” Hux bites out by way of explanation when Ren turns towards the the noise.

 

He can’t help himself from noticing that Hux looks more like his old self now that he’s mad. He supposes it answers wether or not Hux noticed his presence in the dream-memory.

 

Ren’s not sure why he says it but, “Your mother was surprisingly attractive considering she made someone like you,” comes out of his mouth.

 

It reminds him painfully of how Han Solo used to tease his friends. Red light, white light and so on.

 

“Shut up.” Hux snaps as he sinks down next to Ren.

A beat, then:

 

“How much did you see?”

 

“Not much” Ren lies and they leave it at that. They sit silently on Kylo’s bed watching the droids work.

”This is not how things where supposed to work out” Hux says after a while.

It’s uncharacteristically open of him. Ren tries to skim Hux’s mind but all he gets is mathematics and stress. The usual.

He nods and says nothing. He wants to touch his scar but resists.

At some point their hands touch but they don’t mention it or move them.

+

 

He watches Hux blink sleepily next to him and an old dead part of him hopes that he will fall asleep there but instead Hux gets up once the droids are done and goes back to work even though they both know there is nothing for him to do.

 

+

 

Kylo stays seated for a while longer and then makes up his mind. He showers and dresses and stretches out his healed arm.

 

He puts a helmet on.

 

+

 

He finds Hux a while later in his office though it’s clear he’s not doing work. There are only so many repairs to be overseen and almost none that need Hux’s actual presence. Without any news from Snoke they’re just waiting.

 

Kylo sits down heavily on a chair across from Hux’s desk and without being asked Hux pours them both glasses of something that smells like strong alcohol, though Kylo’s never had the nose to tell any of the kinds apart.

 

He hates drinking, has been warned against it and any other human weaknesses but takes his helmet off to have a sip anyway, for fortification and, maybe, because he wants to understand Hux.

 

He makes a face at the taste and Hux laughs, which is a strange sound coming from him.

 

“I don’t like drinking” Ren admits, a bit embarrassed.

 

“Sure” Hux says “I don’t either” as he downs his drink and then pours Ren’s into his glass.

 

A beat.

 

“Why are you here, exactly?” Hux asks.  
Kylo frowns. He’s not sure how to do this, or if it will even work. He’s not sure he wants it to work. He thinks about light, about Hux’s mother.

 

“I want to show you something” he says, “give me your hand.”  
“No” Hux deadpans but Kylo grabs it anyway and Hux doesn’t try to pull away.

 

Together they think of red light. A fall and a yell and a thud.

A street fair.

Loneliness.

 

And then, horrible bone deep regret, and running, and snow and a girl he thought he’d never see again, all grown up and beautiful and filled with hate for him.

He thinks the whole thing through with Hux at his side and realizes that yes, he was right, he feels much lighter after letting himself get to the end. The circles still don’t quite connect but he feels better anyway.

 

He blinks tears and the glare of white light from his eyes and lets go of Hux’s hand.

 

“Oh,” Hux says as he walks around the desk and presses a kiss to Kylo’s closed lips, the first they’d shared in weeks.

 

“Oh” Kylo mimics, for a completely different reason.

 

Kylo stands, pulls Hux close and for a strange long moment hides his head between shoulder and neck. It’s like a hug but neither of them quite understand how it’s supposed to work.

He wonders what kind of light Hux will make when he’s gone and hopes that maybe he’s not a light at all maybe he’s the darkness.

+

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also suncityblues on tumblr if you wanna say hi, and maybe one of these days I'll get myself a twitter or something too haha 
> 
> thank you so much for any feedback, comments, kudos, etc <3


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